


Librarians at Tattoo Parlors

by BonKatze



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bossy!Steve, M/M, Stucky - Freeform, bottom!Steve, hipster!Steve, marvel slash, punk!bucky, tattoo!AU, wintershield - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 10:42:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1855132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonKatze/pseuds/BonKatze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky goes in for a tattoo, Steve looks like a librarian who got lost on a Sunday stroll, and Bucky really wants to know if there's anything hiding beneath the polished exterior.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Librarians at Tattoo Parlors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zombikki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombikki/gifts).



> Based off this http://zombikki.tumblr.com/post/87550574968/tattoo-artist-au-where-scrawny-kid-steve-is-a post by zombikki who kindly let me go crazy with her au. Wasn't supposed to be this long. Oh well whatcanyoudo. Peggy is only mentioned, oops sorry about the tags, and I wasn't sure how "explicit" this was, and I don't think it really is, so I marked it mature. Thank.
> 
> Send me prompts in my ask box and chances are pretty good that I'll write you something.
> 
> bonkatze.tumblr.com

Steve Rogers, all 90-pounds-soaking-wet of him, isn’t what Bucky was expecting the “fucking tattoo savant or something, I swear,” that everyone raved about would look like.

Steve Rogers, with his slick hair and his khakis and tucked in white t-shirt and little black rectangular glasses, is exactly what Bucky would expect a fucking librarian to look like, and this was most definitely not a library.

Bucky thinks maybe the guys were pulling his leg when they recommended this place to him, and were hoping he’d come back with some cute little unicorn stick-n-poke design on his shoulder, and he’s about to turn around, walk out the door with the cheery little bell that rings on opening, pretend he never saw a librarian sterilizing a needle before, and forget this ever happened, but then Steve Rogers looks up from what’s he’s doing, and Bucky’s breath catches just a little in his chest.

To this day, Bucky swears up and down he was only startled at being caught staring, and he wasn’t smitten the minute Steve Rogers met his eyes in a tattoo parlor, his jaw locked, chin tilted slightly upward, blue eyes narrowed and throwing dares across the room like he already knows what Bucky is thinking.

Bucky eases off his scarf, pulls his gloves off finger by finger, sets them on the little table next to the door, and steps over to Steve Rogers, bypassing the receptionist’s desk with no one behind it. Just him and daring little Steve Rogers here tonight, and Bucky could never resist a dare.

“Are you the guy I spoke with on the phone?” Steve Rogers asks, and okay, woah, wasn’t expecting that voice. Bucky nods once. “Well, sit down,” he says, and sweeps his hand a little bit in invitation. Never let it be said Steve Rogers isn’t a gentleman. Bucky sits. “Steve Rogers,” says Steve Rogers, and extends his scrawny arm for a shake. Bucky grasps the hand, quirks his eyebrow a little bit at how firm Steve Rogers’ offered grip is, and says, “Bucky.”

“Got a last name, Bucky?” Steve Rogers says, pulling a pair of sterile gloves on. His fingers are too skinny, and the latex sags around the sides, even though they’re long enough to fill out the tips. Artists’ hands, Bucky thinks.

“It’s James Barnes, actually,” Bucky says. “Just call me Bucky.”

Steve looks up at him, and says, “Steve, then.”

“Okay, Steve,” Bucky thinks, but doesn’t say it.

There’s a stretch of silence while Steve gathers all his supplies, rubs alcohol on Bucky’s arm, and shaves off the nonexistent fuzz from his shoulder, and then the needle starts to buzz and there’s a little whirring sound and without any preamble, Steve gets to work.

Bucky is mesmerized, to say the least.

For all his librarian looks, Steve knows his tattooing shit. From years of experience, Bucky knows this kid is the real deal. It’s the right amount of pressure, not a whole lot of pain, and Steve is so concentrated it almost hurts to look at him. There’s a little crease between his eyebrows, and he’s a little cross-eyed, and Bucky’s breath hitches again when Steve pulls his pink bottom lip between his teeth and worries it so hard he thinks it might burst. Bucky refuses to think “adorable” out loud, but it’s there, in the back of his mind, behind the static of the gun. With his clean-cut appearance and little brown loafers and khakis, the thought crosses Bucky’s mind that maybe Steve isn’t so clean cut underneath the polished exterior.

That thought certainly makes him inhale sharply, and Steve must think it’s pain, because he glances up at Bucky and says, “Sorry,” and then goes back to work.

They don’t talk the rest of the evening, and after what is probably an hour and feels like two, Steve wipes down Bucky’s arm one last time, wraps some gauze around it, and says, “Come back tomorrow.” Bucky nods, doesn’t say goodbye, collects his scarf and gloves from the table next to the door, and the little bell above the door declares his exit for him.

Bucky comes back tomorrow. Then he comes back the next day. And the day after that. It’s a labor-intensive tattoo, and Steve’s only working on it for about an hour every night. But he makes time for Bucky every evening, after he finishes the other appointments and sends the receptionist home, (somewhere in there they worked out a price and Bucky paid in full plus extra, and when Steve tried to refuse he closed his hand around Steve’s and the money and said, “take it,” and Steve had a hard time arguing with an extra month’s rent) and after a week of both of them sitting there, comfortable and not saying a word, and Bucky watching Steve with silent reverence, and Steve only watching what he’s doing and nothing else, Bucky finally can’t hold it in anymore.

“How did you get into this? Tattooing, I mean,” Bucky blurts. Steve has to pull the needle back from his work, because he can’t afford any lapse in concentration right now, and looks up at Bucky.

“What do you mean?” Steve asks. “It’s not like there was a life event or anything, if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t wake up and think, ‘I’m gonna tattoo people for a living.’ It was a process, sort of like art is a process, and now I’m here and I love it.” Steve looks a little miffed, rightly so. Bucky’s interrupting him, and he only has so much time to get this done, and what business does Bucky have asking him anyway? Has he proved himself inadequate over the course of the past week and now Bucky’s got cold shoulders?

“Well, I guess – you just sort of don’t belong, you know? I don’t wanna offend you or anythin’, but you look like a goddamn librarian.”

Bucky should know by now that when you have to tell someone you don’t mean to offend them, you’re probably going to offend them a little.

Okay, maybe he’s pissed Steve off. So maybe he offended him more than a little. Oh well, Bucky’s known for his conspicuous lack of a filter.

“Alright, Buck, I think we’re done for the day,” Steve is seething. His voice is tight, and steady, and his knuckles clench white. It should be intimidating, but tiny little librarian Steve Rogers is too cute, so Bucky has to hold back a grin. This is not good.

“No, no, come on, man,” Bucky starts, but Steve has started wiping down his arm, and Bucky has to pull it away from Steve to get him to acknowledge what he’s saying. “I’m sorry, look, you said you were almost done and I’d like to get this over with tonight, okay?”

Bucky’s heart definitely doesn’t fall out of place a little bit when Steve looks at him like this, all dark eyes and clenched jaw, pink lips a tight line and nostrils flared. Steve looks at him with those same daring eyes from when he first walked in the studio, and Bucky can’t help himself, he’s a fool, he grabs Steve at the junction where his clenched jaw meets his neck, and threads his fingers into Steve’s clean, slick blonde hair, and kisses him.

Steve doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t make a sound. Bucky doesn’t fucking care, he just keeps pressing, insistent, giving in to the dare, holding Steve like a dying man. He thinks he might be dying.

Steve reaches up and grabs Bucky’s wrists and pulls him away, and then Bucky realizes what just happened. His eyes go wide. There is no expression on Steve’s face.

“Sit down. Let me finish.”

Bucky swallows. Oh man, he really messed up big time. Steve hates him now, and he’s going to finish the tattoo and then send Bucky home and never speak to him again. The silence is pregnant, and it takes Steve fifteen unreadable minutes, and then he wipes down Bucky’s arm and says, “Go look at it.”

Bucky goes to the mirror, turns a little at the waist, and can’t help his jaw dropping just a little, lips parting, and saying, under his breath, “Holy shit.”

There, covering his entire upper arm, and fading when it reaches halfway down his forearm, is an intricately shadowed design that looks like vertically scaled strips of armor. It’s simple, but it’s complex in execution, and Bucky doubts anyone but Steve could make a tattoo look this real. He has to touch himself to make sure the little plates aren’t raised, and then has to touch the little star on his upper bicep to make sure there isn’t really red paint there, just a little worn from use.

He’s going to kiss everyone who ever recommended Steve to him hard on the mouth. He’s going to kiss Steve again. He doesn’t see Steve approach behind him, holding his fingers and tapping nervously.

“You like it?”

“Shit, yeah, I like it,” Bucky says. It’s an understatement.

“Okay,” Steve says. Bucky thinks this tattoo warrants more than an, “okay,” but he doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t stop looking when he says,

“Come home with me.”

“Okay,” Steve says again.

\-- -- --

Bucky has never really minded that the lock on his front door sticks, because it usually just means he has to pull up hard and put a little extra force on the key, but with Steve’s hands wrapped around his good arm, pressing kisses all over the available skin, Bucky thinks he’d just as well break the door down.

He gets it open, somehow, and they’re tumbling through the hallway of his tiny apartment, pulling at shirts, leaving them all over the floor, and there goes Steve’s khakis. They haven’t worked out a rhythm yet, but Bucky isn’t too concerned, because he doesn’t really mind the little clacks of teeth and bumping noses, and holy shit Steve is on his bed, and Bucky is on top of him, and there’s no way this is really happening.

“Christ,” Bucky says. He exhales into Steve’s shoulder and slips his teeth over the hollow at Steve’s collarbone. The soft little noises Steve is making are forcing him into a frenzy, tearing at his fly to relieve a little pressure. Steve runs his hands down Bucky’s arms, up and down, deftly avoiding the new ink, although Bucky couldn’t find it in himself to care if Steve faltered and caused a little pain. He doesn’t falter though, because Steve Rogers is goddamn perfect. Steve rakes his fingers through the hair at the base of Bucky’s neck, practically keening up into him, and he has to sit back on his haunches, perched over Steve’s skinny body, and just look a minute and catch his breath. Steve is indulgent, so he lets Bucky take him in a second before he cants his hips.

“Are you just lookin’, or are you gonna come back down here and defile my librarian sensibilities?” Steve says. Bucky snorts.

“Checking for tattoos. Piercings. Anything.” It’s not entirely untrue. He was intensely curious as to whether or not Steve was hiding anything beneath the pressed exterior, and he hasn’t gotten too good a look yet beyond stretches of soft skin across porcelain. Steve’s bottom lip puffs out a little at the side where he’s had it between his teeth. Bucky doesn’t think too hard about leaning down to kiss him there. When he comes up, Steve’s pupils are a little dilated, and Bucky swears he registers something like fondness in his eyes, but mostly he looks exasperated.

“Quit the cute shit, Bucky,” Steve says. “It’s right there in front of you.”

Bucky looks in front of him.

Speak of the devil, he thinks, because right over Steve’s heart is a little silver shield, red white and blue, patriotic as hell with a star in the center. Bucky wants to snort, but thinks better of it, and settles for running his fingers over the tattooed ridges in the plates, so clean they look real. Steve is still underneath him.

“I got in fights a lot when I was younger,” he says. Bucky hasn’t said anything to prompt Steve, doesn’t plan on saying anything, but Steve starts yapping away anyway, like he feels he needs to justify the stupid little thing. “I got sick a lot, and I was smaller then - I mean, smaller than I am now, even – but even though I was a bean pole, if I saw someone getting picked on, I’d sock the guy doing it. Usually only got in one good one, and they’d get in about three.” Bucky thinks he’s supposed to laugh, because is that a joke? But he can’t stop watching his own fingers trace the little star in the center.

“Had a friend, Peggy, she’d come in wailing, drag me out of there, take me home and patch me up,” he laughs, breathy little sounds. “Mortifying. Imagine, a dame coming to pull you out of a fight. But she was right to do it. Good ol’ Peggy.” Steve pauses, and Peggy’s name comes out sounding reverent, but Bucky must imagine it because he starts yammering again. “Anyway, got the shield done by a good friend. Sort of a symbol. Protection, bravery, all that.”

Bucky swallows. It’s pretty heady stuff for their first night in bed. Not that he’s complaining, because the night being heady constitutes there being a night at all. “Any others?” he asks, but he thinks he knows the answer.

“No,” Steve says, and maybe he was about to say something else, but Bucky has had enough talking and he already knew the answer, so he tugs at Steve’s briefs’ waistband and it shuts him up real quick.

Somehow, and it’s all a blur, really, he doesn’t know exactly how, but somehow Steve’s briefs come off and Bucky’s jeans are halfway down his legs, stuck around his knees, and he’s laying between Steve’s thighs, one arm under his chest for support and the other hand wrapped around Steve’s cock. Well, one hand, and his lips.

Steve’s cock is surprisingly disproportionate, considering his extremely small stature, Bucky thinks while he bobs up and down. Not that he’s massively endowed, but he’s a good American average. Steve’s got a death grip on the sheets, and one thing that drives Bucky crazy is a hand in hair, rubbing his scalp when he gives head (like this happens all that often), so he reaches for Steve’s wrist and puts it on his scalp and holds it there a second as if to say, “Yes, please, thanks.”

Steve’s fingers massaging his scalp, and the flat press of his tongue against the underside, and strategic attention to the head has Steve coming apart, but Bucky has been saving his dirty tricks for last, and so after a while, he hums a bit, and drags his tongue agonizingly slow up to the tip before swallowing, and that’s it, Steve’s wrecked, coming down his throat.

Bucky, for his questionable experience, takes it like a pro, and only has to wipe a little come on the back of his hand. When he’s got his bearing, he looks up at Steve, whose eyes are still screwed shut, the hand that isn’t tangled in Bucky’s hair tangled in his own hair, chest pumping up and down. Bucky grins.

“Damn, baby, you have no idea how good you look,” Bucky says, and Steve opens one eye only so he can narrow it.

“Don’t call me baby.”

Bucky ignores him, of course. Lack of filter, and all that.

“Aw, come on baby, I can’t help myself.” Steve has had about enough of this, so after a few more breaths, he forces himself forward and pushes Bucky onto his back maybe a little too roughly, and kisses him to shut him up. Bucky doesn’t complain, just kicks off the rest of his jeans and boxers and grabs Steve around the middle, fingers almost meeting.

“Lube,” Steve says between kisses, “Condom.”

Bucky doesn’t stop, just lets go of Steve with one hand and reaches over to the drawer by the bed and produces a little bottle and a square foil wrapper. Steve is the one who breaks it off, Kisses down Bucky’s chest, then his abdomen, and then kisses the head of Bucky’s cock and Bucky is conflicted, because it’s dirty and sexy and simultaneously the cutest thing he’s ever seen.

Steve sits back on his heels, tears the wrapper off the condom, and rolls it onto Bucky a little hesitantly, like he hasn’t done this more than once, but not so inexperienced that he hasn’t done it ever. Bucky just watches, one arm behind his head and the other tracing patterns over Steve’s arm.

“C’mere,” he says, and Steve crawls up his length toward him, tortuous friction between them. Bucky uncaps the lube bottle and pours a little on his fingers, then reaches down to Steve’s ass and kneads one of the cheeks with the fingers that aren’t slick with lube before rubbing it around the tight little entrance and pushing in a little experimentally.

Both of them groan.

“Jesus, Stevie, you’re gorgeous,” Bucky says, watching Steve come apart on his fingers. He’s probably being a little too forward when he’s already got two fingers buried in Steve’s ass in no time, but Steve isn’t complaining, he’s pushing back on Bucky’s fingers in encouragement, so he keeps stretching Steve out.

“Look at you, doll,” Bucky says, and kisses each of Steve’s eyelids. “All wrecked on my fingers. Can’t wait to get inside you.”

“Yes,” Steve says, and forces himself down onto Bucky’s fingers, grinding their bodies together in the process. Oh god, Bucky is done for.

“Can I?” Bucky asks, and Steve swallows and nods.

“Yeah,” he says, “Yes.”

Bucky doesn’t need a whole lot of persuading beyond that, so he pulls his fingers out and pours more lube onto his hand and slicks up his cock, and then grabs Steve a little and shifts him forward so he can just sit, and if Steve objects to being manhandled, he doesn’t say anything.

Steve doesn’t need much encouragement, they’re both too desperate to care, so he spreads his hands out over Bucky’s chest and lifts himself a little and positions himself over Bucky’s cock. The tip breeches his entrance, and Steve shudders and Bucky has to close his eyes a second. Then Steve’s going again, working his way down, and if it hurts, he ignores it, because it feels so good otherwise.

“There you go, baby,” Bucky says. There’s a shaky little breath wrapped around his words, but Steve is breathing quick and shallow and for a meek little librarian he’s pretty good at this taking charge thing, but then what did Bucky expect, he practically dared Bucky to take a chance on his art, did he really expect a difference in the sex? Bucky tells Steve so.

“God, baby, you’re good at this.” He says. Steve pauses mid-sink, looks up at Steve through his blonde lashes, and Bucky knows it’s supposed to be at least a little menacing, but it’s really just hot and he almost loses it right there, half buried in Steve Rogers’ tight little ass.

“Stop callin’ me baby,” Steve says, and he isn’t moving, damnit, move.

“But you’re jus-“ Bucky stops arguing when Steve rolls his hips a little bit, and they both breathe, “right there.”

That’s it. Game over. Bucky forces all his weight toward his good arm, and he scrambles over Steve’s small frame and pushes in hard, brutal, and okay, later he’ll think he got a little carried away, but how could he not? Steve, just looking at him with those daring eyes, and his little pink mouth all slick, and the smallest red bruise on his collarbone – Bucky’s a goner and he knows it.

Steve is a saint because he doesn’t complain, or say anything, just wraps his skinny legs around Bucky’s hips and encourages it, pulling Bucky forward. He has the top of his head practically flat against the mattress, neck thrown back far, adams apple bobbing up and down while he tries to catch his breath. Bucky wouldn’t expect he’d ever use the word “beautiful” to describe a man, but Steve Rogers doesn’t usually live up to Bucky’s expectations – he exceeds them.

They’re only at it a half-minute longer, before Steve starts chanting Bucky’s name, over and over, “Bucky, Bucky, Bucky,” and Bucky knew he was a goner before, but nothing compares to the way his name must taste on Steve’s lips when he comes, and before Steve has remembered to breathe again, Bucky’s choking on some snarky remark he had half formed that he would have wisely kept to himself anyway, and he’s coming, and this is probably the best sex he’s ever had.

There’s an indeterminable period of time before they both get themselves together, and Bucky, whose collapsed partly on top of Steve’s skinny body, shifts over and flops onto his back, and Steve, whose been breathing heavy partly from the orgasm and partly because Bucky is fucking heavy, turns on his side to look at Bucky.

“Don’t say nothin’,” Bucky says, sleepily, and Steve, perfect Steve, doesn’t say anything, not a word, just scoots up close and rests his head on Bucky’s chest, wraps an arm around Bucky’s middle, throws a leg over Bucky’s, and falls asleep.

Bucky follows, one arm curled around Steve’s shoulders, the other running up and down his back, and tries not to wonder too hard how he ended up with little Stevie Rogers, tattoo artist extraordinaire, in his bed sated and asleep.

Bucky falls asleep before he can come up with a reasonable explanation.

\-- -- --

Steve Rogers, curled into himself, all skinny arms and legs, wearing nothing but a sheet and a shield, is not what Bucky expects to find in his bed the next morning. He doesn’t expect coffee and waffles, or any answers to any of the questions he still hasn’t asked, or sleepy good morning kisses. He doesn’t expect this will go anywhere, because Bucky knows from experience two things: tattoos and cold sheets in the morning, and he doesn’t expect Steve to be much different, and doesn’t allow himself the pleasure of hoping for something cute and romantic with the librarian tattoo artist he barely knows.

But Bucky’s expectations about Steve Rogers have always been pretty off, and so when Steve Rogers rolls over in his sleep the next morning and pillows his head on a particularly tender portion of Bucky’s newly inked arm, Bucky expects it to hurt.

It doesn’t.


End file.
